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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

Probably worth noting that “scans homeless people” means "scanning people’s body temperatures at a shelter where they could quarantine and get tested for COVID-19” and that the robot "is also used to remotely interview individuals who have tested positive for the virus”. Still out of the ordinary but a little less dystopian in tone.

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The bigger question for me is why the police spends 75k on this. That's a yearly salary for 1-2 social workers, and could provide a lot of quarantine space for infected homeless people. While the Boston Dynamics robodog is quite advanced for what it is, it is still basically a toy, and if I was a US citizen, I'd be really annoyed with public funds being spent on this.

>The bigger question for me is why the police spends 75k on this. That's a yearly salary for 1-2 social workers

That $75k number quickly balloons up to quote exorbitant amounts if health of those social workers gets put in danger due to such interactions (whether due to getting infected or due to violence inflicted upon them).

Given that we are trying to reduce infections in the overall population by any means possible, this seems like a rather cheap and non-invasive (aka no restrictions imposed on the population) way of achieving that. Sure, masks help, but if you are surrounded by tons of infected people on a daily basis in a confined environment, you have a rather notable risk (as evident by all the cases coming from doctors who got infected after working with covid patients during the first two waves).

Why should we put lives of 1-2 social workers at risk and deal with them potentially costing way over $75k, instead of spending those $75k on a solution that has none of those risks?

Because the dog isn’t a solution.

If the person has symptoms, they need a swab. If they don’t have symptoms and you’re suspicious of infection (eg they are a close contact), they need a swab. The robot can’t do that.

Also, does the dog cost $75k and that’s it? Or is there ongoing costs, upgrades and running repairs? It might not need sick days, weekends or vacations, but it can’t do a fraction of the work a human can.

I would expect it to also require operator training and authorization mechanisms. Then there are use policy development and maintenance. Plus there would be coding costs since this seems to be a specialized use case.

Bringing in a semi-autonomous robot to work amongst the public probably doesn't and shouldn't happen in a financial void.

Perhaps it's being evaluated for other purposes by the company that developed it and/or the local police department. They should really make that clear if so.

I don't think adding a pandemic makes it less dystopian.

Going around scanning for body temperature definitely makes it less dystopian than going around scanning for people's identities, which was the impression I got from the title.

A $75k surveillance weapon decked out with cameras, sensors, lasers, onboard compute, and hooked up to the network is "just" going around playing School Nurse.

Keep dreaming.

Agreed, this isn't a robot used for intimidation or as a police-presence replacement, its used in the same way a disease-resistant social-worker would have been used, if such a person exists.

They do exist now.

Wait until someone argues that they need to not be disease resistant to have empathy.

> isn't a robot used for intimidation or as a police-presence replacement

Not _yet_

I don't trust the police either, but a two-foot-tall mobile camera with a top speed of less than 4MPH is not a slippery slope to sinister murderbots, any more than letting police drive cars is a slippery slope to them buying giant spiked steamrollers to crush homeless people with.

And at least the AUP prohibits "weaponization of the robot", so we should all be safe.

Either that, or departments have already asked for that, hence why it is called out.

The text is confusing. They are scanning temperature. They are scanning eyes? Are they scanning temperature in the eyes?

In Afghanistan, it was common to scan eyes for identification just as it is being done upon air arrival to the U.S.

I understand why reactions here are mixed or even mostly hostile.

At the same time, the headline is quite suggestive and borderline misleading.

That's a bit of a spin. The "shelter" is a homeless "tent city" that is "state run" - by "state run" they mean there are porta potties and garbage collection. The quarantine facility is entirely separate.

It was also used in NYC in public housing areas, already overly policed, and in a response to some domestic violence incidents, to what end is unsure.

Boston Dynamics:

"It’s basically a camera on a mobile device," he said.

And it costs $75,000 or more.

What a fantastic use of federal relief funds or police budgets.

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